The Catechism of Our Mother God
This Catechism outlines the fundamental tenets of Filianic Trinitarianism – what some people call the religion of the "triple Goddess".
In some versions this Catechism has been added to with material that is not universally agreed upon, but this is the basic and original Catechism of the Children of Dea, upon which every Filyana can agree.
It comes with a commentary explaining each of the articles.
A Short Catechism of the Children of Dea
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL
1. From whence do you come and where is your first origin?
I was created from before the beginning of time by Dea out of the overflowing of Her divine love.
2. What manner of creature are you?
I am the reflection of a fragment of Her eternal Spirit.
3. What have been your actions since the beginning of time?
I have passed through many states of existence and many forms of life (although I can remember but a little).
4. How came you upon this wheel of countless existences?
In the beginning, my soul turned from the love of Dea and so fell into exile from her natural state.
5. What is the natural state of your soul?
The natural state of my soul is Perfect Union with Dea, which is the state of pure delight.
6. What is the first cause of existence?
Dea is the first cause of existence, for She created the manifest universe.
7. What is Dea?
Dea is the one Spirit of the universe, complete in Herself, uncreated, and infinite in potency, perception and perfection.
II. DEITY
10. What are the three Forms of Dea?
Our Celestial Mother, Her Divine Daughter and the Dark Mother who is Absolute Deity.
11. Who is our Celestial Mother?
The Mother is the Creator of the world, and Ground of all being.
12. What is Her Nature?
She is pure Life, pure Light and pure energy.
13. What are Her Acts?
All life, all action and all thought flow from Her.
14. Who is Her Daughter?
Her Daughter is Princess of the World, Priestess of the World and Queen of Heaven.
15. What is Her Nature?
She is pure love.
16. What are Her Acts?
As Princess of the World, She governs all the cycles of life and
nature; as Priestess of the World, She gives us Communion with Her
Mother; as Queen of Heaven, She shall bring us at last to the
Celestial Throne.
17. Who is the Dark Mother?
She is Absolute Deity, Who existed before the beginning of existence and is beyond being and unbeing.
18. What is Her Nature?
She is outside space and time; She is all that is and all that is not.
19. What are Her Acts?
The exhalation of Her breath or Spirit is our Mother, the Creator of
the world. Of Her other Acts, our minds cannot conceive.
III. THE NATURE OF DEITY
21. Had Dea any beginning?
Dea had no beginning and will have no end.
22. When did Dea create the world?
She creates it now and in every moment; if She ceased to create it, it would cease to exist.
23. Where is Dea?
She is in every place at all times.
24. What is the name of Dea?
She has been given many names by many different peoples.
25. Yet are there many Gods?
No, there is only one God.
26. Are there any other Deities?
There are no other Deities.
27. Who are those others that some worship as Deities?
Some are forms under which Dea may appear, or under which certain
creatures may perceive Her, others are Janyati and creatures of the
higher spheres.
28. Could Dea have a special relationship with one or more of these higher creatures?
She could have no special relationship.
29. What is the reason of this?
Firstly, She alone is uncreated; all other beings are of Her creation, therefore none can exist on Her own level.
Secondly, the highest relationship between creature and Deity is that
of Perfect Union; this is the final aim of every soul, and no special
relationship can be higher than this.
30. What are the powers of Dea?
The powers of Dea are infinite; no thing is impossible to Her.
31. What is the knowledge of Dea?
The knowledge of Dea is infinite; She knows all that is, all that has been and all that is to come.
COMMENTARY
The Filianic Catechism, or catechism of the Children of Dea, was first produced some thirty years ago. Its intention was to clarify and codify the most fundamental tenets of the Faith of Dea. Nearly everything in it is common to the understanding of all Deanists, with the exception of the parts that are specifically Filianic — that is, those that relate to the Daughter. Some Deanists regard God simply as the Mother, while others (the Filyani, or Filianists) look to the lunar Daughter of the Solar Mother as the Mediatrix between Deity and the world, just as the moon reflects the light of the sun which is "too bright for us to look upon".
The doctrine of the Daughter, and of the Threefold Nature of Deity is, naturally enough, often compared to the Christian concept of the Trinity, to which it is, in some respects, parallel. However, it can equally be compared to the Hindu Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the world; for the Mother creates the world, the Daughter preserves it, by mediating Her light, and the Dark Mother is She Who in-breathes the world back into Herself at the Night of Time.
Again, the Mother can be seen as Saguna Brahma — Deity-with-form — while the Dark Mother is Nirguna Brahman, Deity-beyond-form, and therefore essentially unknowable to our earthly faculties of perception, reason and even analogy (hence the Upanishadic formula neti, neti — not this, nor this), while the Daughter mediates Dea-with-Form to our earthly state.
Yet again the three Forms (or rather the two Forms and the non-Form) may be seen in terms of the three gunas, with the Dark Mother representing the apex of the upward tendency (Sattwa), the Mother representing the outward tendency (Rajas) in its most fundamental form — the manifestation of the cosmos itself — and the Daughter representing the descending tendency (Tamas), not because She Herself is in any sense tamasic, but because She sacrificially descends to the lowest depths of creation for the salvation of all beings.
1. From whence do you come and where is your first origin?
I was created from before the beginning of time by Dea out of the overflowing of Her divine love.
2. What manner of creature are you?
I am the reflection of a fragment of Her eternal Spirit.
These catechism questions deal with the divine origin of maid, and with the understanding that, ultimately, all things are Dea, and Her most perfect reflection in any world-system is in its central or Axial being, which, in our world-system, is humanity.
3. What have been your actions since the beginning of time?
I have passed through many states of existence and many forms of life (although I can remember but a little).
4. How came you upon this wheel of countless existences?
In the beginning, my soul turned from the love of Dea and so fell into exile from her natural state.
These questions deal with metempsychosis — the transmigration of the being from one form of existence to another — which in Hinduism and Buddhism is known as the Wheel of Samsara. This does not necessarily imply a doctrine of earthly "reincarnation".
4. How came you upon this wheel of countless existences?
In the beginning, my soul turned from the love of Dea and so fell into exile from her natural state.
5. What is the natural state of your soul?
The natural state of my soul is Perfect Union with Dea, which is the state of pure delight.
The state of the being in material existence is often said to be caused by avidya, that is, by ignorance of the true nature of the Divine, which is all-in-all. Eastern doctrines, and the ancient Greek understanding have tended to see this in terms of knowledge and ignorance, while the western monotheisms have tended to adopt a more moral perspective, seeing the "fall" as originating in an act of will. The Catechism states the matter simply, without stressing either perspective (both of which are true in their own terms) and affirms the ultimate nature of maid as being one with Dea.
11. Who is our Celestial Mother?
The Mother is the Creator of the world, and Ground of all being.
12. What is Her Nature?
She is pure Life, pure Light and pure energy.
13. What are Her Acts?
All life, all action and all thought flow from Her.
The Mother is the Creatrix. She is Dea seen in Her expansive or creative mode. The term "energy" needs to be treated carefully. It should certainly not be confused in any way with the conceptions of modern physics (which are sometimes abusively projected onto the metaphysical plane by "New Age" writers, following their predecessors the Theosophists). The Sanskrit term shakti, understood in its highest sense, as the creating, enabling and animating power of the cosmos, is much nearer to the sense intended here. The Mother can also be seen as Maya, the all-beneficent provider of the world She has made for us to inhabit.
14. Who is Her Daughter?
Her Daughter is Princess of the World, Priestess of the World and Queen of Heaven.
15. What is Her Nature?
She is pure love.
16. What are Her Acts?
As Princess of the World, She governs all the cycles of life and
nature; as Priestess of the World, She gives us Communion with Her
Mother; as Queen of Heaven, She shall bring us at last to the
Celestial Throne.
The Daughter is Dea in Her aspect of Love. We may see that She is, in some senses, continuous with the Mother — continuing Her creative play, manifesting the love that is inherent in the Mother and mediating these things to our fallen state. Some would argue that the separation between Mother and Daughter is to some extent artificial, but the Filianists (Filyani) regard Her as the form in which we should approach Dea because She makes our approach to the Mother possible, especially in this dark age.
17. Who is the Dark Mother?
She is Absolute Deity, Who existed before the beginning of existence and is beyond being and unbeing.
18. What is Her Nature?
She is outside space and time; She is all that is and all that is not.
19. What are Her Acts?
The exhalation of Her breath or Spirit is our Mother, the Creator of
the world. Of Her other Acts, our minds cannot conceive.
The Dark Mother is the unknowable Nirguna Brahman. We can say little of Her beyond neti, neti. It is important, however, to understand that the term "dark" refers to her unknowability, and, to an extent, to the darkness we feel in relation to the final dissolution of the light-world we know: a dissolution which is, in reality, a merging into the love and oneness of Dea.
There is no implication of darkness in the negative sense, which some would see in the worship of Kali or in the figure of the Crone in ancient European religion. While these figures have their place in tradition, they are all too frequently misunderstood by modern people, particularly, in this case, "feminists" who are attracted to "darkness" for all the wrong reasons and who, consciously or unconsciously, wish to bring Tamasic deformism into religion.
In a certain sense the "Darkness" of the Dark Mother is seen as a Higher Light; a Light so elevated that it does not dazzle our "eyes", as does the Light of the Mother, but is wholly imperceptible to them. This Mystery is expressed in the words of the Filianic Rite, when she is called upon as:
Absolute Deity,
Dark beyond the Light, and Light beyond the Darkness.
21. Had Dea any beginning?
Dea had no beginning and will have no end.
22. When did Dea create the world?
She creates it now and in every moment; if She ceased to create it, it would cease to exist.
23. Where is Dea?
She is in every place at all times.
24. What is the name of Dea?
She has been given many names by many different peoples.
25. Yet are there many Gods?
No, there is only one God.
26. Are there any other Deities?
There are no other Deities.
These questions make clear the transcendence of Dea, Her independence both of time and space, and the absolute dependence of the manifest cosmos upon Her. They also firmly refute the error of polytheism, which is a metaphysical absurdity (there cannot be two Absolutes, neither can a circle have two centres). No genuine tradition has ever been polytheistic in the sense of postulating a multiplicity of Absolutes, though the Western Monotheisms have sometimes misunderstood other traditions in this way. All traditions recognise the multiplicity of the Powers of Deity. In the West these are normally termed Angels.
27. Who are those others that some worship as Deities?
Some
are forms under which Dea may appear, or under which certain creatures
may perceive Her, others are Janyati and creatures of the higher
spheres.
28. Could Dea have a special relationship with one or more of these higher creatures?
She could have no special relationship.
29. What is the reason of this?
Firstly, She alone is uncreated; all other beings are of Her creation, therefore none can exist on Her own level.
Secondly, the highest relationship between creature and Deity is that
of Perfect Union; this is the final aim of every soul, and no special
relationship can be higher than this.
Question 27 makes clear the universality of Dea as the one Absolute, Who may be seen in different ways by different peoples. Questions 28 and 29 are directed primarily at the notion of a "Goddess" having a "male consort". Dea is the Absolute, and necessarily has no consorts or equals.
30. What are the powers of Dea?
The powers of Dea are infinite; no thing is impossible to Her.
31. What is the knowledge of Dea?
The knowledge of Dea is infinite; She knows all that is, all that has been and all that is to come.
Questions 30 and 31 affirm the omnipotence and omniscience of Dea.
See also:
The Filianic Creed - the perfect statement of the Feminine Trinitarian Faith
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